


Something Rotten in the Academy of Gotham

by narfiffiftic (maladictive)



Category: Batman (Comics), Gotham Academy (Comics)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3348935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maladictive/pseuds/narfiffiftic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyle noticed the kid creeping around the wild part of campus earlier that morning on his way to the courts, but he didn’t say anything. He tried explaining this small bit of etiquette to Maps, but it went largely ignored.</p><p>Damian attends and adjusts to Gotham Academy and meets Olive Silverlock; bonding happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Rotten in the Academy of Gotham

**Author's Note:**

> SORRY THIS IS SO LATE I love u dani happy belated birthday many xoxos
> 
> this fic works under the assumption that: Damian will need degrees to go on in life; bc the academic system of advancement in the US is rigid like that.

Kyle noticed the kid creeping around the wild part of campus earlier that morning on his way to the courts, but he didn’t say anything. 

Whatever it was about a certain spot that this kid frequented at the late hours of night, he didn't need it bothering him or his sister. Whether it was giant hulking shadows behind campus buildings or that Heathcliff kid’s habit of climbing the girl’s dormitory with his weird friends, you didn’t really focus on this stuff. In the same way you didn’t tap the new Wayne kid on the shoulder in math class to ask why he’s going around lurking in swamps when he’s already about as inconspicuous as the Joker in a flea market.

He tried explaining this small bit of etiquette to Maps, but it went largely ignored.

-

 

Damian noticed everything, which he bragged about every chance he got. Little escaped his eyes, and now, in a school crowded with kids (one year, he’d tell himself, just one year to graduate and then move  _on_ ) there was more he could notice. He filtered most of it easily, but occasionally large chunks of information stayed in his head.

Damian didn’t bother with playing nice, and the arising frictions between him and his classmates worried Grayson. In fact, the news that Damian had flattened a third-year boy worried that man more than any obvious proof that Robin continued to leap from buildings the night before exams.

They ended up establishing a system; every now and then Damian would have access to the lines the bats used. They set up a device and buried it behind the tennis courts, in the marshy land where Damian could go to talk to whoever wasn’t patrolling at the time.

It was mostly Steph who kept in contact, since she tended to patrol the latest, and was therefore available before ten at night. She and Damian had bonded as batgirl and robin anyway, and the system worked most of the time. 

The late night conversations typically began with a recount of injuries sustained and progress made on several cases, and eventually moved on to ‘how Damian was doing’.

“Yes, Mizoguchi is non-threatening, but the younger one keeps following me, she won’t leave me alone, I think she suspects…”

Steph thought back to his description of Maps from last week, and figured that if the girl did suspect, she probably wasn’t suspecting the right things. But then, it couldn’t hurt…

“Keep an eye on her, then, if it makes you feel better.”

She was trying to decide between logging off the link magisterially and staying until Damian finished reporting in (there was nothing to report, just reports to make), when another voice on the line interrupted.

“Is there an Olive Silverlock at the school?” Dick was on the other line, from whatever hidey-hole he was staying in that week. 

“Who?” The name was familiar to Damian. 

“Yeah, find out. Bruce has a note here in the case file.”

“Just look her up, then?” Steph interrupted, “If Batman made a note-“

“I did look her up, and the note is very clear, so that’s why I’m asking you to find her.”

Dick left the link at that, and Steph was a bit resentful that he managed to do it so enigmatically. He was Batman for a time; that’s probably what did it.

Damian reported back two nights later.

“There is an Olive Silverlock at the school.”

“Yeah? What’s so special about this girl that Birdwatcher asks after her and Batman makes notes about her?”

“I don't know,” Damian muttered, the static clouding his tone more irksome than any other night. It was the cheap communicator they were using, Gotham Academy needed something sturdy and bury-able in wetlands more than something built for clarity.

But Damian Wayne needed to go to school and blend in, and Robin still remembered things like being dead, and so he demanded a temporary line of communication until he settled one in at his dorm.

“There’s stories about an old haunting, and the west wing is being renovated. It’s been going through renovation for about as long as some of the kids have been here.”

“Haunting, huh?” Steph said.

“There’s a file on that too,” Dick’s voice chimed in.

“ _Stop_  doing that.” Steph just barely stopped herself from jumping, or, damn it,  _gasping_.

“Sorry, I forget people don’t know I’m on the line with these old things. Haven’t used these since… actually, I never had to. Nightwing ran solo most of the time and Robin had a --,”

“What does the file say?” Damian interrupted.

There was a pause, and then some typing, and Dick began to recite the main points on file, Steph made a note to access it later and see it for herself. 

“A convict was rumored to be taking refuge in one of the wings, that whole deal was mostly explained as kids playing jokes, and there were some cases of ghosts from old diaries… or something. That was discounted as a prank, or something like a prank, at least,” 

“How much of that was cover-up and how much of it was actually pranking?” Steph wondered aloud.

“ _Miss Silverlock thought it appropriate to hold back knowledge of the escapee Killer Croc’s presence on the academy campus, potentially endangering students and faculty alike_ ,” Dick recites. “Or at least, that’s what it says here. It was real, but there’s something there that Batman didn’t want kept on file, or at least not on this file.”

“Is that not what happened?” Damian interjected finally, confused by Dick’s last comments.

“Batman wrote ‘potentially’ and ‘thought it appropriate’, and that’s not his style.”

Steph considered that, turning over the hidden possibilities in the wording, the gray areas. She wondered what Bruce knew that they didn’t. 

“I really don’t know any other details, this is an incomplete report, Bruce is keeping something off it.”

“But you do know something about  _her_ ,” Damian said. Dick was silent, before -

“How is she?”

“What?”

“How is she? In school?” Dick insisted.

“Quiet. Sometimes she appears sullen. The Mizoguchis are attached to her, and one Pomeline Fritch never leaves her side.” Damian paused. “They may be involved, I have yet to confirm that.”

Steph snorted. “ _Involved_ ,”

“That’s such a cute way of saying they’re dating, li’l D.”

“Shut up.”

They didn’t talk for some time, Damian watching a duck on the water by the small dock, and Steph working through a list of memos Cass had left her. Dick shifted and sighed, obviously getting up from the computers. 

“Study hard and don’t slip up, kiddo; you’re a genius, but you have to actually pass.” Just vague enough to be clear he was talking about school, and just vague enough to be safe.

“I have studied at PhD levels in economics and in the sciences, I have been trained and taught by the best _,_  my mother taught me medicine, I could be certified as a  _physician._ ” 

“You don’t have a single degree or grade to your name though, do you?” Steph cut in, and felt a bit satisfied when Damian snorted and disconnected his line.

Damian resisted the urge to fly to the dorms, imagining his father’s exasperation and disapproval. He walks, at his leisure, and when he finally rests he falls asleep at once.

He awakes from dreams of blood and funerals to new notifications on the group text established between Drake, Dick, and Cass; and the nightmares of the night fall somewhere behind him and the day ahead.

 

 

Olive hadn’t been happy before discovering the truth about the thing in the walls, and finding the truth out didn’t make her happy. 

It was the things that came with the truth, or the things that came with ignorance that changed everything. Maps, Kyle, and Pom mainly, even Killer himself in a way. Her mother.

She sighed and leaned her head onto the windowsill, not quite tuning out Maps and Pom passionately debating a character in a story.

There was never any denial that he had chosen a spot in the walls where he could see her. Thoughts of her and him, of her mother and that  _picture_  scared her and hurt her, even now. It hurt more than anything, now that the fear had ebbed and faded.

It was confusion that hurt the most.

Any other introspective thoughts on parenthood and ignorance and truth were interrupted by an annoying swishing sound from beyond the window. That Wayne kid, the young genius one, was running across campus in a jacket that didn’t suit him. The material was loud and black; the bands of gold on his arm stood out in the falling night.

It had been a week since she’d last done something inadvisable.

“Hey, Maps, what were you saying about that Wayne kid earlier?”

“Damian!?” Maps leapt to her feet, and scattered various books around Pom’s knees. “He’s so FUNNY!”

 

 

Olive went out when she was sure they were sleeping, but first she made sure Maps’ face was on the pillow and adjusted the blanket so it covered Pom’s feet. She hovered in embarrassment before kissing Pom’s wide forehead, and then she was gone.

In only a jacket and her pajamas, carrying a flashlight just in case, Olive left quietly and went in the direction she had seen Damian going.

She saw him at the dock by the water; it was a place she went to often when she needed to be alone. She took care to move slowly, to stay near trees and foliage, but it wasn’t enough.

Her heart skipped in guilt and awkward trepidation when he turned his head around and deliberately stared in her direction.

She hadn’t even hidden properly, and she didn’t need to. He had seen her, and the brightness of his eyes in the dark was eerie.

“Miss Silverlock.” His voice was clear and high, young. He stood like he carried no weight, his back perfectly straight. He looked so grown up.

“Just Olive.”

“Olive, why were you following me?” No accusation in his tone, just blunt forwardness.

“I was worried. You’re new and you stand out, I figured you might want to talk.” Her lying had gotten phenomenal in light of recent events, and it showed.

“We can… talk.”

She wondered briefly what it was that made the prickly and unlikable Damian Wayne want to talk to her, after having caught her following him. She moved to the dock, and stopped a bit before reaching him. Olive looked down at him slightly, and Damian disguised looking up at her with a proud tilt of his chin. She almost smiled.

“How are you?” She asked.

“I’m well.”

“Quite the story going around, when you disappeared last year.”

“I was… ill.”

“I’m glad to see you’re better,”

“I’m doing far better, yes.” There was an odd tilt to his mouth, like he had a joke to tell but he wasn’t able to say it. “And you?”

Olive started, the unexpected inquiry hanging between them.

“I’m alright.”

Silence took its place, and Olive and Damian observed each other’s faces stiffly. Damian finally made the first concession; he cleared his throat. 

“Are you involved with Miss Fritch?”

“ _What?”_

He didn't make an effort to elaborate, and Olive almost wanted to push him into the water.

“I am,” She told him, and he nodded.

“I figured.”

 

 

“Olive  _is_  involved with Pomeline Fritch.” 

“I didn’t ask.”

Damian snorted, and Steph rolled her eyes, deciding to let Damian’s insistence on being right  _always_  go without comment.

“What else have you found out?”

“She’s a wonderful liar,” Damian said, “She lies easily and very well,”

“We’re used to that, aren’t we?”

“She’s aware of whatever it is Father is keeping off of her record, it has something to do with the hauntings and with Killer Croc.”

“Maybe concerning why she’d kept his hiding spot secret?”

“Maybe.”

Steph waited for Dick to show up; she realized that he typically came on right before going out on patrol, partly to check on Damian’s progress, mostly to  _talk_  to Damian.

Dick made his appearance later than usual, and when asked why he was late he just told them that he had work to do.

“Olive is… fine. Annoying, though. I didn’t have a chance to practice tonight, I noticed her following me before I could take my leave,” Damian informed him, getting right to the point, “We talked.”

“You should keep doing that,”

 

They didn't talk for another week, not until she sat by him as he pretended to study in the library. Her sidekick and her girlfriend were not with her, and they sat in silence for fifteen minutes. Damian ruffled through an anthology of American literature, and Olive fiddled with her Chemistry notes. 

He realized this was what Dick probably felt like the first few days they lived together in the batbunker. 

Damian asked Olive what concepts in Chemistry her class was covering. 

"We're adding elements."

Damian took a moment to collect himself. 

"How are you doing with that?"

"Terribly."

"Yes, clearly, since what you're doing is actually  _balancing equations_."

"Oh," Olive looked down at her notes, her almost sullen expression unmoved, "Then how about you help me with that?"

Maps and Pom joined them an hour later, and all pretenses of studying were abandoned. Olive went to her dorm that night educated, with a definite feeling that next time there would be no fifteen minute long awkward pauses.  

 

Damian found it absolutely senseless to try and talk while an entire cafeteria was talking, but it seemed to be common practice amongst youth to do so. And the silence became awkward if you didn’t. He grew used to the practice, and mastered (of course) raising his voice the perfect amount to be heard and also unheard by passerby and eavesdroppers. He spoke a tad lower than usual this time, simply because the subject was embarrassing. He wasn’t proud of the sway Grayson and his father held over his schooling.

“I was thinking of joining the drama club this year. Grayson says I need extracurricular activities to balance my academics out, and apparently my current work doesn’t count.”

Pomeline looked bored, leaning back on Olive’s shoulder now that she had heard Damian’s announcement, “What’s your current work?”

“I’m an intern at the company.” Damian wasn’t lying, it was just that his job as an intern meant lazing around and doing work he could do with his eyes shut. The whole family knew it was just for show.

“Drama, huh?” Olive muttered, as she played with Pomeline’s hair, “I was thinking about that last semester.”

Damian watched her closely, and Olive was confronted with the now usual thought that Damian knew a lot of things that he didn’t tell anyone.

“I had a friend who acted. She taught me a lot, and I have a gift for putting on faces. It’d be easy and it’d make Grayson happy.”

“Well, we gotta keep Grayson happy then, huh?” 

“If you two join,” Pomeline groused, “Then I will too.”

 

 

Damian never did get a chance to practice his new powers diligently on campus, and instead made sure to practice every chance he could on the weekends and holidays, when Robin hit the streets.  

It was a fair trade, since Olive turned out to be a good conversationalist when she wasn’t stewing in sullen introspection or cuddling with the Fritch girl. Maps tended to occupy her conversational faculties for long periods of time as well. To his knowledge every student in school needed a ‘group’, and while he didn’t really feel like a  _part_ of this group yet (there was the case of the other three’s shared adventures and his own secrets), it wasn’t bad. He appreciated their company.

The school’s production of  _Hamlet_ that year, in any case, was almost legendary. Bruce Wayne, Cassandra Cain, and Tim Drake attended, and with them was a blonde girl with a sharp eye. That was written about at some length in the Gotham Gazette, with much consideration given the fact that Damian Wayne was starring as Hamlet himself. 

Later that night, Olive was politely introduced to the giants of Gotham, and noticed Damian glancing around sharply, looking for someone. 

That someone came to them, nearly catching her off guard, and he was tall and dark skinned and bright-eyed, and when Damian saw him he froze.

Olive was too focused on the flowers her mother had given her (with a watery smile and a slowly-strengthening weight on her cheek, wiping away the wetness there) to worry too long about whatever mysterious Wayne relative Damian accepted lengthy hugs from, but she caught sight of his face when she bid him and his family good night. 

They were happy. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> yes the title is a reference to “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” no i just couldn't come up w/ a title lmao that's. that's ridiculous.  
> I didn't pay extreme attention to Forever Evil or the coming events of Grayson for this fic. just had some fun.  
> HAPPY BELATED BDAY DANI <333333


End file.
